Similarities among three pediatric brain tumors that arise in different structures of the CNS – pineoblastoma, retinoblastoma and Group 3 medulloblastoma – have been linked to their shared origin during pineal gland development. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified the molecular signatures that drive these tumors from pinealocyte progenitor cells that conserve a common differentiation program, providing a shared therapeutic target for these three cancer types.

Similarities among three pediatric brain tumors that arise in different structures of the CNS – pineoblastoma, retinoblastoma and Group 3 medulloblastoma – have been linked to their shared origin during pineal gland development. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified the molecular signatures that drive these tumors from pinealocyte progenitor cells that conserve a common differentiation program, providing a shared therapeutic target for these three cancer types.

Zapata Computing Inc. (Zapata AI) scientists have demonstrated the first instance of a generative model running on quantum hardware outperforming state-of-the-art classical models in generating viable cancer drug candidates.

Research led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Harvard University shows base-editing approaches could be more effective than CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing approaches for treating conditions such as sickle cell disease and β-thalassemia. Writing in the July 3, 2023, issue of Nature Genetics, the researchers compared three base-editing approaches with two CRISPR-Cas9 approaches to increasing levels of fetal hemoglobin in CD34+ hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, and found one of the base-editing approaches was the most potent.